New plant breeding, seed output developments

Press, 17 December 1976, Page 16

New plant breeding, seed output developments

The opening last week of the kimihia research centre of Wrightson NMA Ltd, in Tancreds Road in the Lincoln district, has highlighted some recent developments in plant breeding and cereal and small seeds production in New 7 Zealand.

The passing of legislation giving royalty rights to plant breeders, where none before existed, has brought to New Zealand a wide range of new plant material and the possibility of New Zealand farmers benefiting from it.

New Zealand has been given access to the very considerable investment there has been in plant breeding in countries like the United States and United Kingdom in the last 10 years as plant breeding organisations have seen both a potential market here for their seeds and also the possibility of their material being multiplied in this country as part of their breeding programmes.The royalties, of course, help to provide the profits and resources for further research and development. But Mr R. Russell, who is New Zealand grain and seed manager for Wrightsons, emphasised this week that this in no way detracted from the contribution that the Department of Scientific and Industrial Research had made and was continuing to make in the plant breeding area, and he noted the continuing pre-eminence of New Zealand pasture grass varieties against all comers. He saw New Zealand and overseas developments in plant breeding as being complementary and expressed appreciation of the Co-operative attitude that both the directors of the Crop Research Division, Dr H. C. Smith, and of the Grasslands Division, Dr R. W. Brougham, had shown to the new material that was coming in from abroad. At the opposite end of the world, Northern Hemisphere and European plant breeders have seen the possibility of using this country as a means of multiplying new plant material and thereby cutting down the time taken from making an initial cross in a plant breeding programme and the new variety being available for growing commercially. In other words it has opened up the possibility of New Zealand becoming the winter nursery for Northern Hemisphere plant breeders.

New Zealand is apparently one of the few coun-

tries that is open to northern plant breeders to use in this way. The major part of the seed multiplication programme at Kimihia is being done for the Nickerson Seed Company, of Rothwell in Lincolnshire.

Apart from 1500 varieties from North American Plant Breeders, the bulk of the new plant material, comprising about 5000 separate plant varieties, comes from the English company. Nickersons have also seconded one of their men to the Kimihia centre -for three years and a half. He is Mr N. D. Gardner, who has been trained in cereal breeding and who is a registered crop inspector. Most of the Nickerson material is barley varieties, including some hybrids. According to Mr D. B. Bishop, who is the chief agronomist at the new centre, the barleys seem to shift more easily than other varieties, being less affected by changes in day length. There are 15 oat varieties in the American material and Mr Bishop says that sometimes oats will not seed at. all or seed too early when they are shifted from one environment to another. There are also some 500 spring wheats among the 5000 varieties. Mr Gardner said that normally it would take about 12 years from the time a cross was made until a new variety was available commercially. As a result of multiplying seed in the off season in the northern hemisphere in New Zealand this could probably be done in about half of the time. The idea, he said, was to bring new material to New Zealand from about the F2 generation, which did not need as close supervision. His firm will send a female representative to New Zealand to select material from that grown in New Zealand for carrying on further. One of the objectives, he said, was to put their new material into yield trials st a fair early stage, to eliminate those varieties that did not seem to offer much promise of persisting further with.

To fit in with resowing in Britain, the seed from the English material has to be on its way back home by about March 15. This is quite critical, with some of it being back in the ground again on the other .side of the world in April. Special single plant and small plot threshing machinery has had to be imported to facilitate this work. Mr Gardner says that about 3200 single plants have to be threshed and the seed individually packed for sending bacK to England.

Mr Russell said that this multiplication was a commercial undertaking as far as his firm was concerned,

but from this there was a spin-off in that an eye could be kept open for material that also looked to have promise in New Zealand so it could be carried on for use here.

Hassan, a Dutch barley variety, has shown an 8 per cent yield superiority over Zephyr, and there was also material in last season’s sowings with a 20 to 25 per cent yield superiority over Zephyr, which has been taken out on to five or six trial sites throughout the country for further testing. Another aspect of the work of the new centre is new crop development and one of the crops that comes into this category is sugar beet. Beet varieties have also been multiplied for overseas interests and check tested for such qualities as trueness to type and monogerm characteristics ; —

that is the ability to produce one plant per seed. One of the firms that Wrightsons have been working for in this area has been one of the major English producers of sugar beet seed, the Anglo Maribo Seed Company, Ltd, also of Lincolnshire, whose director of plant breeding, Mr R. A. Hawkins, is now at Kimihia.

Wrightsons have been asked to grow a small area of beet for production of seed to meet O.E.C.D. requirements, and Mr Russell sees a potential for producing beet seed here for northern hemisphere markets and currently trials are being undertaken to put such production on a commercially viable basis. This is quite apart from the potential that would be opened up if a sugar beet industry got off the ground in New Zealand. At Kimihia attention is also being given to cultural and farm practices necessary for growing new crops so that when they are introduced to farmers this knowledge is also available to them.

Kimihia is also assessing pea varieties for processing, both from overseas and bred in New Zealand, as well as producing basic seed for varieties grown in this country.

Following on the passing of legislation protecting

plant breeders rights garden pea varieties from one of the foremost breeders of garden peas in the world, Rogers Brothers of the United States, are also now being grown here, and Mr Russell suggests that there could also be an opportunity here for growing their varieties for the re-export of seed to other markets.

Among research material growing at Kimihia and still far from commercial use is a queer looking pea plant from an English research institution which is virtually leafless and a mass of tendrils, and there are also plants of what are known as agrotriticums, which are a combination of wheat and grass with very long heads. The grain would presumably be used for feed purposes and the plant as a perennial could have a potential for use for grazing as well as grain production. The new research centre is appropriately named Kimihia, which is a Maori word meaning “to seek.” It is about 60 acres in area and is a base, being able to call on neighbouring land if required, and it also has trial areas through the country at Mayfield, Methven, Gore, Palmerston North (in association with the Crop Research Division) and in Gisborne.